How I Came to Read This Book: I impulsively stumbled upon this and picked it up - I work in tech and have worked for companies at various growth stages, I was curious to see this playbook for going from startup to success story.
The Plot: This is a rather clinical breakdown of the 'science of scaling' if you will, largely focused on the role marketing plays in helping a company grow. It could be labeled a playbook as well, covering everything from identifying your ICP and building personas to building out a marketing function to the best approach to building a brand voice and messaging to specific tactics marketers may want to consider. Basically any topic you'd want to delve into related to SaaS marketing, particularly for startups, is tackled here.
The Good & The Bad: Overall this is a good read. I kind of picked it up as a way to reassure myself I wasn't missing some magical formula to marketing software, and I can generally say I'm not. There were few things in here that I wasn't already familiar with. That being said...I appreciated the tidiness of this book, and the thinking behind it. I dogeared 50 pages of things to circle back to and I have no doubt this will continue to be a valuable research for me for quite a long time.
If I had any critiques, I think the book could have used some recaps, to make things a little stickier. You'd just finish a chapter that had a million action items and tasks and strategies in it and apart from all the dogeared pages it was like "Okay so where do I have to go to do what thing again?" I also feel like it could have used more stories or examples to help with retention, even if they had created a fictional company to follow along their journey. In some cases there are lots of really detailed examples, but there were definitely a few spots I was like "Okay but how would you do this?"
Also, because I purchased the actual hard copy of the book instead of the digital copy, I'll mention that some of the visuals are hard to read; I imagine the PDF would be easier to zoom in and explore pieces.
As a bonus, this book does give you access to a membership on the T2D3 website, which includes a (currently limited) library of templates and such to help you along - a nice little surprise that I didn't anticipate at first. Overall this is a solid collection to help new marketers wrap their heads around the world of SaaS marketing, while adding some discipline to existing marketers...I can say I've worked for companies as big as $1B in revenue and they never cared about attribution to the level this book breaks it down (TBH, I don't know that ALL this math is necessary but I appreciated some new learnings). It can get a little clinical and technical and sterile, but I'd hope that a CFO or CRO could step in and co-tackle some of the more formulaic components of building an effective plan.
The Bottom Line: Well worth the $30 price tag.
Anything Memorable?: Definitely read this as some extra credit work while starting a new job...
2022 Book Challenge?: Book #17 in 2022